Your Opinion: Deficit-laden budgets

Bert Dirschell

Centertown

Dear Editor:

Why do we continue to elect self-serving liars to Congress? It should be obvious to anyone that the majority of those in Congress fall into this category. (All dollar figures in this LTE are in 2012 dollars.)

Both parties support handing out free stuff like candy being thrown from floats at a parade. Legislators can't be so stupid as to believe they can keep running up massive annual deficits forever. Those we have elected continue to give us lies and more vote buying free stuff.

The bipartisan Deficit Control Act of 1985, signed into law Dec. 12, 1985, by President Reagan, was a sequestration bill supposedly designed to rein in the federal deficit. In 1985 federal receipts were $1.45 trillion and we had a $380 billion deficit.

Next came the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on Nov. 5, 1990. It was supposed to put stronger "teeth" in the 1985 act.

The bipartisan Balanced Budget Act of 1997, signed into law by President Clinton on Aug. 5, 1997, was supposed to balance the federal budget by 2002. Federal receipts were $2.2 trillion in 1997 (a $750 billion, 52 percent, tax increase from 1985) and we had a $30 billion deficit (a $350 billion reduction from 1985). In 2002 receipts were $2.4 trillion (a $200 billion tax increase) and we had a $201 billion deficit (a $171 billion deficit increase).

In 2011 we got the Budget Control Act of 2011, signed into law by President Obama on Aug. 2, 2011. It specified $917 billion of spending cuts over 10 years. In 2011 spending was $3.6 trillion, it was $4.1 trillion in 2019.

Politicians in D.C. will continue raping us with their deficit-laden budgets as long as we keep returning to office any person who votes for bloated, deficit-laden budgets. In Missouri that would be U.S. Sen. Blunt and U.S. Reps. Luetkemeyer and Hartzler. The only hope for our kids is if we return control of a majority of non-military funding and spending to state and local government.

P.S. Military spending is at near record lows both as a percentage of the federal budget and the GDP.